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AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#221

Post by nz »

qsera wrote: post #219
conception wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we do, we were doing them until about the mid-70s and then the ultra-wealthy figured out how to game the system and we got “Greed is Good” Geckos running things since.

What do you mean "of course we do"? Take education for example. Even in the 70s it was recognized as nothing better than something that create pencil pushers for the government and businesses..If we have more funds, we would just do more of the same...

So, take a look at my previous comment (I am sibling, not parent). The pencil pushers are still being manufactured by the educational system itself, but they major in Business now, not Social Sciences or Education. This is due to government policy from 1980s incentivizing the creation of more business entities (they each need accountants, and managers, and so on), which caused a few generations of people to go down that route. The tragedy here is that these generations have internalized the idea that the practical and profitable is more valuable than the aesthetic and beautiful. Instead of cultivating human beings that can contemplate and appreciate, we are cultivating human beings that can analyze and optimize (this is fine, but it is possible to have too many of them, which creates a competitive dynamic that _everyone_ has to participate in, that _nobody_ can opt out of, and that most people (80% or more) -- even very capable and strategic people -- are likely to lose).

What I am saying is that the paper pushers are allocated elsewhere, they are more miserable and shallow minded now, and they have a corrosive long-term effect on society and culture, even though they contribute positively to economic growth. In way, it is trans-generational debt with extra steps.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#222

Post by gilbetron »

rayiner wrote: post #98
saulpw wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, you have to spend the money wisely. How could we construct a system so that we have 2x as many teachers (thereby halving the classroom size)? That would have a lot of good second-order effects beyond test scores.

So why has per-capita student spending doubled since 1990 (adjusted for inflation) without any increase in test scores? Why haven’t we been spending the money wisely? Student to teacher ratios have continuously decreased and are about half of what they were in 1960. Data on the results is mixed: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/class-size-what-research-...

1. Test scores have increased 2. Simpson's Paradox - we are educating a far great % of young people then we used to be, so we're pulling in disadvantaged kids that would've been left out of the education system, or simply left out of testing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/when-average-isnt-good-en...

A parallel is when I looked into home births versus hospital births when my wife was pregnant. The statistics of home births crushes hospital births in terms of outcomes. But that's because only healthy women who don't have complications are in the home birth category. Hospitals must admit anyone that shows up in labor, and must handle any negative situations.

Schools now handle so many more kids than they used to, and try to meet the challenge. They are failing because the challenge is too great given the funding, not to mention the corruption of the bureaucracy that inflates administrations.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#223

Post by fc417fc802 »

intended wrote: post #220
fc417fc802 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This tech is already devastating education across the globe, and has been built on outright theft of creative work by people who can expect nothing in return. Not sure you realize how divorced from reality this statement appears (at least to me). These things make fantastic personal tutors for material up though the bachelor's level that are available around the clock and never tire of your inane questions. Current…

Multiple educators and institutes are grappling with a plague of cheating. This is just a recent article : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708991 LLMs are found to erode skill > https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 LLMs have largely been a net negative on human education systems.

If some subset of people use calculators to cheat or their skills atrophy how does that have anything to do with whether or not they serve a useful purpose?

LLMs will revolutionize education for those that care to learn. They will have at least as large an impact on access to knowledge as wikipedia had ~25 years ago.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#224

Post by rayiner »

gilbetron wrote: post #222
rayiner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why has per-capita student spending doubled since 1990 (adjusted for inflation) without any increase in test scores? Why haven’t we been spending the money wisely? Student to teacher ratios have continuously decreased and are about half of what they were in 1960. Data on the results is mixed: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/class-size-what-research-...

1. Test scores have increased 2. Simpson's Paradox - we are educating a far great % of young people then we used to be, so we're pulling in disadvantaged kids that would've been left out of the education system, or simply left out of testing. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/when-average-isnt-good-en... A parallel is when I looked into home births versus hospital births when my wife was pregnant. The statistics of…

But even the chart disaggregating scores by race shows that within each group test scores barely went up since 1990. Meanwhile, inflation adjusted per student spending has increased 30% since then.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#225

Post by civet_java »

scoofy wrote: post #201
civet_java wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't generate private returns but investing in your worker population definitely nets returns for the public. Also, some might say that upending the de facto copyright regime in favour of AI companies was an altruistic gift.

If you want to "invest" in society and get a return, by all means, buy government bonds and support the government's policies to do these things. You get a return, and the government gets money to invest in society. It's a $30 trillion dollar industry.

I'm not sure I understand your point. What benefits does treating social/national governence as an industry bring to society? Besides the govt funds it operations through taxation in addition to debt.

Your unstated assumption that investments in AI were private and therefore beyond question simply isn't true.

The AI industry's profits depend to a large degree vast textual corpuses that they acquired and trained on in either straight up illegal or at the least in legally murky contexts; public and private knowledge form the backbone of these enterprises. Said industry then serves AI models to customers via data centers that again off load the cost of inference to the public.

Of course, AI companies could step up pay up their fair share and people will happily treat the prerogatives of private enterprise as private. But until then I think certain quarters of society will continue to believe, rightfully so in my opinion, that AI companies are on the hook for unacknowledged debt.

Of course morality doesn't inform law so the current situation isn't illegal despite how egregious it is. But the law can only attempt to deliver justice, it can't guarantee it. Which is why open, honest, collaborative discussions are important to have exactly now.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#226

Post by mountainriver »

samrus wrote: post #12
mountainriver wrote: post #4

Meanwhile AI has gotten so good it can just about one shot a SaaS app. I’m not worried about it…

Yeah but the investments arent aiming for churning out SaaS apps. Its to automate large swathes of intellectual labour. Of which only SWE has been cracked yet. There is a question mark as to if the others will crack. If they arent then these investments will collapse from speculation down to reality. That possibility is what is being discussed here As to whether that will happen, I think that risk is real. Because cl…

You are really comparing this to Watson??

If you can fully automate software you are fully missing the point of everything you can do with that and how valuable it is

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#227

Post by scoofy »

civet_java wrote: post #225
scoofy wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to "invest" in society and get a return, by all means, buy government bonds and support the government's policies to do these things. You get a return, and the government gets money to invest in society. It's a $30 trillion dollar industry.

I'm not sure I understand your point. What benefits does treating social/national governence as an industry bring to society? Besides the govt funds it operations through taxation in addition to debt. Your unstated assumption that investments in AI were private and therefore beyond question simply isn't true. The AI industry's profits depend to a large degree vast textual corpuses that they acquired and trained on in…

If you think AI is built on copyright infringement, that's fine, and I somewhat agree with you. That's immaterial to the argument.

My point is that investment here -- "the outlay of money usually for income or profit" -- isn't just giving people stuff altruistically. Investors, here investing in AI, are trying to get a return on their investment.

They aren't just spending money to spend it.

Re: AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers

#228

Post by intended »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #223
intended wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple educators and institutes are grappling with a plague of cheating. This is just a recent article : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708991 LLMs are found to erode skill > https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 LLMs have largely been a net negative on human education systems.

If some subset of people use calculators to cheat or their skills atrophy how does that have anything to do with whether or not they serve a useful purpose? LLMs will revolutionize education for those that care to learn. They will have at least as large an impact on access to knowledge as wikipedia had ~25 years ago.

I went down this rabbit hole, and if you see the MIT study, its not calculators anymore.

Also - which kid (or adult) wants to study instead of just play?

Furthermore, Wikipedia (and calculators) were largely free, nor did they come with a side of white collar work automation.

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